Water pumped from aquifers between 1993 and 2010 caused sea levels to rise and the planet’s axis to tilt eastward
Humans pumped and displaced so much groundwater in just two decades that we shifted the tilt of Earth’s axis, new research suggests. Earth’s rotational pole, the point around which the planet rotates, shifts with changes in the distribution of mass across the globe, wobbling and wandering in a process called polar motion. While scientists knew that changes in water distribution resulting from climate change could contribute to polar motion, the impact of groundwater depletion was unknown.